FAQs: Learning Technology (NILE)

Q. Why is my video taking ages to upload to MediaSpace?

Answer

Without specific information, it's hard to say for sure, but one cause might be your home broadband service. When I try and upload a relatively small 50MB file over my home Wi-Fi, it takes a frustratingly long time and often the computer times-out before the video has uploaded.

Argh!

However, it's not NILE playing up, it's because my broadband provider gives me a really low upload capacity, compared to the University. If I go to somewhere like speedtest.net and check out my home upload speed, I can see I get under 1MB per second, which is awful, whereas on the University campus the upload speed this morning was 117MB per second. Blisteringly fast. My three 50MB files went up in under ten seconds.

So, if you need to upload a video for an assessment then consider doing it on campus, or certainly check your upload speed and upload early. Uploading video is rarely a technical issue with NILE or MediaSpace, it's often slow broadband.

Remember: if you miss a deadline because you failed to upload your video, you risk a capped grade or a failed assessment, so please don't leave it until the last minute.

The other really important thing to remind all students is that all video should always be uploaded to MediaSpace at video.northampton.ac.uk and then linked to a module assessment.

Do not upload video directly into your NILE module because the upload could fail, it could take hours, you will take up lots of expensive cloud storage and you might also create hours of extra work for your tutor.